Wang and/Wen
One
Ancient Wuxi was a water country, the territory of the depression lake swaying, everywhere is the vast expanse, water and sky. The largest of these lakes is the 36,000-hectare mighty Taihu Lake, and to its northwest is 15,000 hectares of Miaomiao Furong Lake. Furong Lake spans the three counties of Wuxi, Wujin and Jiangyin, and is part of the lake north of Hengshan (now part of Wujin City), which was called Shanghu lake in ancient times; in some lakes in Wuxi, it is also called Wuxi Lake. Furong Lake had another name in ancient times, called Shegui Lake. Before the Tang Dynasty, its area was very large, including some other lakes that communicated with it, forming a huge area of Furong Lake. To the north, it crosses Jiangyin and communicates with the Yangtze River; in the east, it flows into the Wuyi River, and then zigzags to the south to Yanxiang Township, which is connected with Changzhou County (present-day Wu County). The average depth of Furong Lake is only 5 feet, which is a little shallower than Taihu Lake, because the lake basin is very shallow, it also determines that Furong Lake has been a lake with serious flooding since ancient times, and with a little large water, it will overflow the shore of the lake, flood everywhere, and pour water everywhere. Therefore, Furong Lake is also a changing lake, in the event of drought, its area shrinks to a smaller extent, about 15,000 hectares, equivalent to three-fifths or half of the size of Taihu Lake, and its location is also maintained in the area bordering Wuxi and Wujin. Once it encounters a rainy flood period, Furong Lake will swell up and connect with some neighboring lakes to form a vast and vast Furong Lake area. The situation of the southeast of Furong Lake entering Changzhou County, which was recorded in the ancient "Book of Wu Di", is a reflection of the situation during the period when waterlogging was seriously harmful.
However, for most of the time, Furong Lake is very gentle and calm, showing its unique beautiful and tranquil Wuxi water town atmosphere, becoming part of the Wuxi landscape that complements Huishan Mountain. Tang Dynasty Furong Lake and Huishan are very close together. The famous tea saint Lu Yu wrote in the "Records of Huishan Temple": "From the Datong Hall straight up to the Wanghu Pavilion, there are North Lakes in the northeast nine miles, one Shegui Lake, and one Furong Lake. Its Hunan control of Changzhou, East Dong Jiangyin, North Flooding Jinling, Zhou Hui 15,300 acres, cang cang, forced by Xuanhu. "From the foothills of Huishan Mountain to the northeast of Furong Lake, which stretches for more than 100 miles, lotus flowers can be seen everywhere in summer, which is the most prestigious scene in Wuxi. In ancient times, the name of Furong Lake was also due to the lotus flowers in the lake. It is said that the Tang Dynasty poets Pi Rixiu, Tortoise Meng and The Biling resident Wei Buzhuo once took a painting boat, carried a pot of alcohol, and passed through Furong Lake from the Wudian River to The Taihu Lake and toured to Hangzhou. Along the way, he wrote poems and painted, and named the painting boat he rode as "Five Boats". Tortoise Meng once had a poetry cloud:
Good sentence into who does not volt,
If the Divine Dan steals it, it must also be guarded against,
Before the wind, mo strange with the poetry,
Ben is Wu Yindang Pulp Lang.
- "Huaixi Yam Name Clutch"
The people of Wuxi have also always regarded Furong Lake as an excellent place to visit and appreciate the lake and mountains. At that time, Huishan was a famous scenic spot in Wuzhong, and Furong Lake was added a lot because of Huishan, and it was closer to Wuxi and Changzhou City, and now Wuxi Ronghuzhuang and Wuqiao were already the scenic areas along the Furong Lake of that year, and it was very convenient for the people to enjoy the tour. In contrast, at that time, Taihu Lake was far away from the urban area, a remote corner, and the lakeside area had not yet developed a tourist scenic spot, and the traffic was very inconvenient. Before the Tang and Song Dynasties, the shore of Taihu Lake in Wuxi was still a wild grass trail, very desolate, and even a place where tigers and leopards were infested, and ordinary people would not swim in Taihu Lake at all.
Furong Mountain in Furong Lake is also a famous place of interest. This mountain is like a water hibiscus, floating in the Hibiscus Lake, so there is a poetry cloud: "The peaks in the north of the city are lovely. A hibiscus flower in autumn water. "Furong Mountain is located at the junction of Bashi and Northeast Tang in the present-day Xishan District, and was also known as Yuhong Mountain in ancient times. Around 8 miles, 30 meters high, there is a dragon well on the mountain, the well is 3 meters deep and 5 feet wide, and it is said to be a miracle. There is a Xianji Temple next to the well, and there is a Huancui Tower in the temple, and the climbing tower overlooks Furong Lake, the water and sky are colorful, and tourists are like in the painting. There are also two humanoid rocks about 6 feet high on the mountain, commonly known as shigong and shimu, and there is a golden rooster stone next to the stone mother. In the Yuan Dynasty, Furong Lake has been congested, the lake surface has been greatly reduced, Furong Mountain is connected to the land, the tomb of the famous Wuxi Yuan Dynasty painter Ni Yunlin, is buried in the southern foothills of Furong Mountain. Later, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, Furong Mountain became the place where the surrounding villagers visited the qingming festival, so it was commonly known as Qingming Mountain.
Two
In ancient times, there were 15,000 acres of vast lake Furong Lake, for today's Wuxi people, it is like an unheard of story, and the older "old Wuxi", the memory can probably only find a few old place names such as Ronghuzhuang and Wanghulou. Indeed, Hibiscus Lake has long since evolved into a historical term today, and it has completely disappeared, far away from us. Perhaps, it is most appropriate to use the idiom "vicissitudes of the sea and mulberry fields" to describe the changes of Furong Lake.
Probably because of the shallow water, wide area and frequent floods of Furong Lake, since ancient times, the people of Wuxi and the surrounding areas have been digging water networks and controlling floods, while committing to the reclamation of Furong Lake. In the fifteenth year of the reign of King Chu Kaolie (248 BC), The Chunshen Emperor Huang Xie was enfeoffed in the Wuxi region, then known as Wu Xu. Huang Xie organized the people to "govern Wuxi Lake and establish Wuxi Pond" and made the first attempt to reclaim the lake field. In the fourth year of the Jin Dynasty (321 AD), Shi Zhangmin of the Jin Dynasty once again tried to "drain the water from the lake, order the five diarrhea, and focus on the Gu district, thinking that it was a field." Unfortunately, the timing he chose was in the middle of winter, so the project was extremely arduous, "in the middle of winter, wearing ochre clothes, making the people bear the soil, and condensing in the cold weather, the work was not accomplished." (Wang Renfu: "Wuxi Zhi") Although this time it still ended in failure, the enthusiasm of the people in Wuxi to reclaim Furong Lake was mobilized. Since then, the people along the lake have continued to carry out small-scale weir water plugging the lake and building polders in accordance with the old traces of the embankment built by Zhang Min. In the fifth generation, The Wuyue king Qian Wei recruited migrant workers to manage the Furong Lake to build embankments and weirs, communicate the scattered good fields, and establish a water network polder management system.
In the Song and Yuan Dynasties (1086-1093 AD), the people around Furong Lake experienced more than 700 years of exploration and practice of surrounding the lake since the Jin Dynasty, and finally decided to fully reclaim Furong Lake and turn it into a fertile land. This is really a great change like a "vicissitudes of the sea", which fully demonstrates the indomitable will and perseverance of the ancient Wuxi people and nature. The whole process of encircling the lake has gone through three dynasties of Song, Yuan and Ming, during which it has been plugged and flooded, flooded and resealed, and experienced one thrilling struggle between people and heaven and earth again and again. At the beginning of the comprehensive encirclement of the lake during the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the project of building the embankment of the lake was first carried out, and the lotus gate and the steep gate gate were built to control the flooding of the lake. In the sixth year of Qiandao (1170 AD), two gates were placed on the Wudi River to control the water of Furong Lake, so that it flowed into Taihu Lake in the south and into the Yangtze River in the north. In this way, after the initial reclamation of the Song Dynasty, Furong Lake was finally transformed into a thousand acres of farmland. However, this is only a preliminary treatment, the embankment project is not yet sound and reliable, as long as the waterlogging, the water will be poured back into the good field, and suddenly a vast ocean, the good field will return to the lake. Therefore, during this period, Furong Lake still appeared from time to time, suddenly large and small, becoming a lake similar to intermittent.
In the first year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (1403 AD), Xia Yuanji controlled the water in the Wuxi area and dredged the Wusong River, loujiang river and Baimao port, which increased the drainage channel of the reclamation area of Furong Lake, which was conducive to alleviating flooding. During the Xuande period (1426-1435 AD), Zhou Chen, the governor of Jiangnan, summed up the experience of water control in previous dynasties, repaired the Liyang East Dam to carry the water, opened the Huangtian Port and the Junwu Song River to drain the water, and built the Mengdu River Gate and the Wei Village Gate. After this series of rectification, Furong Lake has appeared on land, and the people have filled in the earth according to the terrain to build a flat, and finally the most difficult to control the western part of Furong Lake has been surrounded by lakes into fields, totaling 108,000 mu of polders and more than 70,000 mu of Heping Tian, of which two-thirds belong to Wujin and one-third belong to Wuxi. This area of lake reclamation is extremely low-lying and shaped like a tank basin. "Step by floor, look like a staircase", all rely on the embankments to resist the flood, "the surrounding embankments are eight feet wide, eight feet high, the inner gang shore is four feet high, and the middle boundary embankment is one foot wide and two feet wide and six feet high." These good fields can only grow one crop a year of rice, can not produce wheat, commonly known as "no wheat low field." For Zhou Chen's merits in governing Furong Lake, building Furong Wei, and opening up the lake field, the people praised him as: "The upper benefit is to the country, the lower benefit is to the people, and the benefit is to The time, Ze and the hereafter." Although the people gave Zhou Chen such a high degree of praise, in fact, Zhou Chen's rectification of Furong Wei was only beginning to achieve results, and the ability of the polder area to resist waterlogging was still very fragile, as Huang Jie of the Qing Dynasty said in the "Sikkim Zhi Xiaolu": "When the rain arrives, it is less than two feet, and it is slightly exposed to the shore, if the water is more than two feet, the shores are flat and the ocean is in full swing." If the obscenity continues and the outside water rushes in, the inhabitants of the polder will be fish turtles." This is also the case, in the last year of Jiajing, between 1561 and 1563 AD, it was broken for three consecutive years, and the original appearance of Furong Lake was almost restored at that time. So in the nearly one hundred years since then, the industrious and brave people of Wuxi have continued to unremittingly renovate FurongWei. In the eighth year of the Wanli Calendar (1580 AD), Wujin County's Guo ZhiFan asked Zhihe Gongyin 538 taels and Canggu more than 2,400 stones to allocate Wujin and Wuxi counties to renovate more than 60 miles of embankments and 10 miles of boundary embankments of the two counties. In the 30th year of the Wanli Dynasty (1602 AD), Ouyang Dongfeng, the prefect of Changzhou, surveyed the polder, built the Nantang polder, added the embankment, the dam bank, the stone cave, and the stone gate, and ruled both inside and outside, focusing on the water conservancy construction in the good field. In the second year of the Apocalypse (1622 AD), Liu Wuwei of Wuxi Zhixian made a huge construction of Furong Wei, and he built the Beiguantang Goose Bank, then known as Liu Gongtang. Liu Wuwei, as a pioneer, personally went to the construction site to pick up soil and build an embankment, and separated the small polders, set up weir gates, and expanded the area of good fields. Because Liu Wuwei used Kuyin in the construction and was punished by the emperor, posterity respected his integrity and merits for the people, and established the Liu Hou Temple in the West Water Pier outside Wuxi City, commonly known as the West Water Narcissus Temple.
Three
After more than 500 years of comprehensive reclamation, Furong Lake basically completed its demise in the Ming Dynasty, but it completely disappeared from the map of the Wuxi area, but it was a matter of the late Qing Dynasty. According to historical records, in the early Qing Dynasty, Furong Lake still existed for 10 miles of water, and its location was in the area of present-day Wuxi Mountain Beixiang, and its south shore was near the present-day Wuxi Wuqiao Ronghuzhuang. In the Qing Dynasty, there are some poems and paintings depicting and inscribing Furong Lake that have been passed down to this day, such as "Ten Mile Rong Lake is opened in a mirror, and the sparkling mountains are surrounded by buildings." Birds in front of the window beckon tourists to come, and the underwater sky floats up. (Ni Cheng: "Little Golden Mountain") "The leaves of the sails pass over the sandbar, and the willows drag the ancient ferry head." The most is the good time of Rong Lake, and the falling flowers fly upstairs. (Qin Yi: "Title Furong Lake Map") The "Furong Lake Map" painted by Qin Yi of Wuxi in the fifty-third year of Qianlong (1788 AD) is a superb work of art, and he vividly depicts the lake and mountains in the water town of Wuxi in the late spring with ingenious conception and subtle realistic skills. In the painting, Ximen Bridge, Baoshanjiao, Sanli Bridge, Huangbu Dun, Xishan Longguang Pagoda, Huishan Temple and Beitang Ancient Canal are all vividly remembered, and the shores of Furong Lake and the islands in the lake are dotted with liquor store platforms, water pavilions, and mountain pavilion cottages; boats in the lake come and go, fishermen zhang nets, Gonggong swinging, tourists racing, the whole picture is vivid and full of life.
Qin Yi: "Title Furong Lake Map"
Although Furong Lake had shrunk into a small lake with only 10 miles of water surface at that time, the green mountains and green water, cage rain and smoke still did not lose its natural charm. Yang Fangcan, a Qing dynasty, wrote in the phrase "Dongxian Song Yirong Lake":
Hometown Yunshui,
Lake Memories is excellent.
Slippery wat sparkling spring color.
When?
Counting small sitting moss,
Dusty,
Overhead light ripples a thousand feet.
Good dreams last night,
Soft and dumb,
Startled light gulls degree ring blue.
Slightly inclined sunset,
Pass through the forest shadow of the front bay,
Smoke stacked.
There are three or two fishing boats with peach blossoms,
Look at the silver scales out of the net,
A burst of red snow!
In ancient times, Furong Lake, which was once known as the grandeur of Wuxi's smoke and water, and the scenery of lotus flowers in Baili, experienced a long-term evolution process from the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, and finally fell silent more than 100 years ago. It doesn't matter exactly what year its last piece of lake disappeared. What is important is that we see this scene: in the place where Furong Lake disappears, it is replaced by green seedlings and golden spikes. After the continuous improvement of the Ming Dynasty and later the Qing Dynasty, Furong Wei has basically possessed the ability to resist waterlogging, in addition to the exceptionally large flood, under normal circumstances, it can ensure the harvest of thousands of acres of fertile land in the Wei. After liberation, the government continued to continuously improve the water conservancy projects in the polder area, and jointly built it with other polders, and now it has become a rich production area for drought and flood protection. In this land, new factories and towns can be seen everywhere, and a thriving party is thriving. Furong Lake has long become a historical term, and what it leaves behind is a lot of enigmatic stories, guiding us to find and explore the footprints of the people of Wuxi region who compete with nature and struggle.
Source: Wuxi History, No. 4, 2000
Image source: Network